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Roles in the Network for Media Action

The NMA consists of members who volunteer in a few roles. An hour a month or an hour a week, we need you! To volunteer for any of the roles below, contact the role coordinator, who will be in touch with you soon.

Monitors
Media monitors survey local newspapers, radio, television, and magazines for stories related to students and writing and reading instruction at the college level. When monitors identify relevant stories, they post information about the stories to the Media Update Forum, where responders can locate it and act.

Responders
Responders monitor the Media Update section of the NMA and write letters to the editor, opinion-editorial (op-ed) pieces, or position statements about the issues posted there. Ideally, responders are located in the same communities as the monitors, so that responses are always locally based.

Editorial Board Campaigners
Editorial boards are responsible for writing the editorials that appear in newspapers every day. The subjects of these editorials are often suggested and/or shaped by experts (like NMA members) who meet with the boards and outline the relevance and immediacy of various issues. Editorial board campaigners would lobby for meetings with the boards of their local newspapers on literacy-related issues.

Archivists
Archivists monitor discussions about college-level writing, reading, and/or students on professional listservs like WPA-L, Rhet-L, and CBW-L. They then compile subject indexes on these discussions which then become a resource for responders.

Professional Resource Compilers
Professional resource compilers gather and post professional, scholarly resources on NMA focus issues to present concise, clearly articulated positions and valid, credible academic research on hot topics that often need quick data (like class sizes, the use of ACT/SAT writing exam scores for placement, machine scoring, and others). The forum, Professional Resources on NMA Focus Issues, serves this purpose.